Devices for ganging a plurality of lawn mowers together to thereby create a widened cutting path are well known. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,608,284; 3,832,834; 3,757,500; 4,063,748; 4,330,981; and 4,287,706. Ganging individual mowers together is obviously useful to create, essentially, one large mowing unit to reduce the numbers of passes required to maintain large lawns, golf fairways and the like.
Ganging individual mowers together has certain advantages over a single large mower unit specifically adapted for cutting wide swathes, such as a significant reduction in cost for the ganged mower unit. Further, if a breakdown occurs in one of the individual mowers in a ganged unit, then that mower can be replaced with a new unit without significant down-time.
Ganging assemblies for a plurality of reel mowers are old. Ganging frames and hitches for a plurality of rotary-type lawn mowers, i.e. lawn mowers having a blade rotating horizontally relative to the grass, are generally more recent.
In regard to ganging reel-type lawn mowers together, drawbacks normally associated with such reel-type mowers carry over to a ganged assembly of the same. For instance, the reel lawn mowers are not considered as efficient on rough terrain as their four-wheeled rotary counterparts. Reel lawn mowers are also subject to jamming, as by sticks and other debris, unlike rotary lawn mowers. Reel mowers also typically require a significant downward force to be applied thereon to effect proper rotation of the reel for cutting, another problem not associated with a rotary mower.
In regard to ganged rotary mowers, a rotary mower must be able to slide along its lateral axis to a greater extent to follow curves or ground contour changes than its reel-type mower counterpart. Consideration must also be given to the dynamics of a ganged group of rotary lawn mowers, since the individual wheeled mowers have a tendency to flip when towed through turns.